I am very sorry. May her memory be a blessing.
Be good and gentle with yourself.
Was the first time in your post (5:58) a typo, did you maybe mean 4:58? Cause otherwise I’ve got to believe you found a woman a policy for her newborn in 90 seconds AND you’re ranting about how long it took. Impressive!
Oops! That is what happens when you are rushing to make a post before the recording ends. My shame is great.
You can buy something like this:
And it will evenly chop those full dose pills into quarters. Then you’d technically have 2,000 of your low dose pills for $7.50 compared to 300 for $12.98.
(I have both a small child and a small dog so my wife and I occasionally need to cut up pills for them, so we use something similar.)
I thought about something like that - I do have a pill cutter but it doesn’t do quarters, just halves, and isn’t terribly accurate.
Really, the cost isn’t outrageous either way, I’m just bemused and annoyed at the huge price difference for LESS medication. Adding the cost of the pill cutter to the cheapo bottle of aspirin would give me 6 years of aspirin (2000 doses) for 20 bucks, versus about 60 for the low-dose pills (we won’t discuss that huge bottle spoiling…) 
I’m not actually sure if we have a local nextdoor here, I might look into it. I did ask a couple of neighbors, but they’ve all done bigger work recently and had no trouble getting one company in particular to take the job; in our case, that’s the company that showed up, told us they’d send a quote in 3 days, and haven’t been reachable for 2 weeks.
We do have another company that seems interested, but our availability didn’t align this week, so we will see.
I also want to pit my client today, who can’t schedule themselves out of a paper bag, and fucked up my day, and likely Monday because they don’t understand that two hour jobs take two hours, and not 15 minutes, no matter how stressed they are about their own inability to get shit done.
TGIF
I trust you’re getting paid for the time that you’re stuck working late?
Yes I am. In fact, I get overtime pay. I would still rather eat dinner on time and watch the Bundys
That’s good!
Yeah, I hear you.
I want to be clear. I generally enjoy my job. It pays well. I work from home using a laptop, mouse and headset provided by the company. The company handles a lot of government contracts. My current position is for the Pennsylvania Department Of Human Services. People who are unwilling or unable to apply online, or fill out a paper application call in and I help them apply for SNAP (foodstamps), medical assistance (Medicaid mostly), or CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance of Pennsylvania). Occasionally, for example when somebody who is homeless calls in afraid that having no address disqualifies them, I get to feel really useful and helpful.
But, Friday night is Friday night. I want to be on my own time and accountable to no one.
These pharmaceutical anomalies are fairly common. A particular blood pressure medication I was once taking was in the provincial drug formulary and covered by the public drug plan, but only at twice the dose my doctor had prescribed. The lower dose for some totally inexplicable reason was not in the formulary and therefore not covered.
The pharmacist just dispensed half the number of double-dose pills and I used a pill cutter that I had got years ago from the vet for whatever pills I needed to cut for my dog. Worked fine.
I recently started a med like that. The smallest standard pill is 2x the dose I need. So I cut each pill in half with a $5 cutter from the drug store. These being chronic daily meds with fairly long half-lives, I’m not much concerned if an attempted pill cut results in a 60/40 split; it’ll wash out just fine,
Thanks for all the kind words people.
Means a lot.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I hope you have treasured memories of her to keep you going.
I have a series of connected rants, but don’t feel like putting a thread together, so I’ll just vent here.
This has been the worst month in memory.
First, the election. Well, I had plenty of worries, and was even in the group that assumed Trump was going to win, although I expected it to be a lot closer, so much booze was laid it.
Last week, one of our closest family friends had their cat pass on them. There’s the chronic bachelor sort, so take my word for it, he had as much emotionally invested in that cat as many of us do in our spouses, and she was a lovely cat at that. So, we’ve spent the last week helping keep him distracted and with people to talk to, as much as possible out of state.
YESTERDAY, my father (85) sent his usual two sentence email to advise that he and my step-mother (82) tested positive for Covid and he has to isolate for two weeks due to his chronic health issues and her for one week. I’m still waiting for more information because I’m trying to decide if I should take FMLA to go help out (630 mile drive) during or after.
TODAY my cousin in Israel emailed that my aunt (Father above’s sister) is in the hospital with difficulty breathing.
It’s only the FUCKING 18TH. What fresh horrors await.
Fuck November.
/rant off
Agree. First the election, as you said. A couple days afterward my grandma died. My husband and I were on the first vacation we’ve taken in years, I think I put a bit of a dent in it by crying half the time.
Now I’m home again, but in no mood to talk to anyone or do anything productive. I just want to sleep for a few years.
Hi. It’s been a while.
I pit plantar fasciitis. I’m a complete baby about pain. This is so freaking painful and has been going on for months. I have one foot that is absolute agony for zero reason. I’m not that active. I walked for 20 minutes today and now I can barely walk. It’s throbbing. But I gotta keep going. Because everything requires walking.
The good news is that I went to the podiatrist today and he gave me steroids and gadgets and a referral to physical therapy so maybe we can fix this.
Hah - yeah, once when my doctor wanted me to take 1000 mg of metformin versus 500 mg, there was some crazy pre-approval required to get the higher dose pill. After a month of back and forth, I had them prescribe me two 500 mg tablets. More expensive, overall, I expect.
By “gadget”, do you mean a kind of splint that keeps your foot flexed (and thus, the fascia stretched out) at night?
I dealt with plantar fasciitis off and on for years. Podiatrist sold me such a splint. I never used it. Finally I tried it.
Within weeks, the problem was gone, and basically has not bothered me in quite a few years.
I don’t think most people have quite such a dramatic improvement, to be fair.
I did, too. Whether it was because of the splint, or it had finally run its course, I couldn’t say.